Meta wants to compete with TikTok after latest move

A recent blog post by Meta revealed that Messenger is coming back to the Facebook app after being apart for almost nine years. Facebook aims to compete with TikTok after shifting the focus of the app.

Messenger and Facebook were split back in 2014. Facebook's built-in feature was turned off, and users were pushed to download an external app to use Messenger. After almost nine years, Meta has taken a step back and announced the merger of two apps. Matt Navara reported it back in December, and today, Tom Alison, head of Facebook, announced it officially in his post.

"Over the coming year, we'll build more ways to integrate messaging features in Facebook. Ultimately, we want it to be easy and convenient for people to connect and share, whether in the Messenger app or directly within Facebook," says Alison. "We are testing the ability for people to access their Messenger inbox within the Facebook app, and you'll see us expand this testing soon."

Having Messenger within the Facebook app makes it much more compact and user-friendly for many. Downloading an external app to communicate may not be the best decision Facebook has made, but in 2014, they chose this path to make Messenger the best mobile messaging experience. Facebook is looking to shift the app from a platform where people communicate with friends and family to more of an entertainment platform to compete with TikTok. The built-in Messenger will make it easy for users to share videos and posts with each other.

He also mentioned that Facebook implemented community chats in some Facebook Groups last year as a way for people to connect more deeply with their online communities, and the first results were promising. "Across Facebook and Messenger, we saw the number of people trying community chats increase by 50% in December 2022," Alison added.

Messenger is not the only topic in the blog post; it covers a slightly smaller place than others. Facebook says it made a great start to 2023 with 2 billion daily active users despite all the reports saying it is dead or dying. Other topics covered were AI-powered discovery, creators and monetization, and the company's future.

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